Iron gate

“ It hasn't got a hinge, and is as heavy as an elephant; you have to lift it up and drag it along the ground. It takes more time to hang a gate that way with a band of iron to a post or a bent stick in the place of the iron, than it would to buy two pairs of hinges ”

“ As cellular iron gates are made water-tight, and have to be ballasted with enough water to prevent their flotation, or are provided with air chambers below and are left open to the rising tide on the outer side above, the gates are light in the water and are easily moved; whereas greenheart gates with their fastenings are considerably heavier than water, so that a considerable weight has to be moved when the water is somewhat low in the dock and the gates therefore only partially immersed. ”

“ When seen partially lit up by the glowing masses of white-hot iron, with only the rays of bright sunshine gleaming through the holes in the roof, and the dark, black, smoky vaults in which the cumbrous machinery was heard rumbling away in the distance—while the moving parts were dimly seen through the murky atmosphere, mixed with the sounds of escaping steam and rushes of water; with the half-naked men darting about with masses of red-hot iron and ladles full of molten cast-iron—it made a powerful impression upon the mind. ”

“ Crandon, “from fishing ore with tongs.”
“We’ve moved along a great way since that time,” said John Bradford, “and most of our progress has been due to iron.”
“Giants don’t do all the work even now,” said Mr. Prescott. “They make short work of iron mountains and surface deposits, but most of them are too large to work underground; though we mustn’t forget that Giant Electricity works down there with the men.
“Giant Gravity helps too, for, when they work below the deposit, he caves the ore down. ”

“ Then a huge, round steel magnet, lowered by a man in a derrick house, picked up half a dozen rails; another lever sent the crane down the overhead tracks; and the rails were dropped in order on waiting cars.
“It used,” said Mr. Prescott, “to take a dozen men to load a single rail.
“Giants or not, Billy Bradford?”
“Giants for sure,” replied Billy.
“Fire-eaters!” exclaimed Dr. Crandon. “Let’s go!”
“I’m ready,” said Mr. Prescott. “I’m glad that the work is so much easier for the men, but I must confess that I don’t care to watch red-hot iron shooting, almost flying around.” ”

“ But the working door of a puddling furnace is the door through which the puddler does his work. It is a porthole opening upon a sea of flame. The heat of these flames would wither a man's body, and so they are enclosed in a shell of steel. Through this working door I put in the charge of “pigs” that were to be boiled. These short pieces of “mill iron” had been smelted from iron ore; they had taken the first step on their journey from wild iron to civilized iron. There isn't much use for pig-iron in this world. You've got to be better iron than that. Pig-iron has no fiber ”

“ Upon a close examination of the specimen that I had brought away with me in my bag, home to the Hermitage, and by consultation with my book, I felt convinced that I had discovered what is called magnetic iron; that is, iron ore that is most universally dispersed over the earth. The action of the compass added to this belief, and the limestone formation was exactly fitted to this kind of ore, which is the same as is generally called the Swedish iron ore, one of the best-known irons in the world. ”

“ To this, it may be replied, that no iron bridge, made by a reliable company, has ever shown the slightest indication of any thing of the kind, though they have been used for many years in Russia, Norway, Sweden, and Canada, and nothing that we know in regard to iron gives us any reason to suppose that any thing of the kind ever will happen. But here, again, every thing turns upon the quality of the iron. ”

“ So judicious was the selection of its site, and so great its utility, that a thriving town of the name of Ironbridge has grown up around it upon what, at the time of its erection, was a nameless part of "the waste of the manor of Madeley." And it is probable that the bridge will last for centuries to come. Thus, also, was the use of iron as an important material in bridge-building fairly initiated at Coalbrookdale by Abraham Darby, as the use of iron rails was by Richard Reynolds. ”

“ One naturally wonders how it is possible to mine and carry these ores to the shipping ports of Duluth, Superior, Two Harbors, Marquette, Ashland, Escanaba, etc., put them aboard ore carrying boats, transport them by steam power to Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburg, Buffalo, and the many other iron centers and convert them into iron and steel at a profit. This, of course, is only possible because of the inventive genius of man. For every operation ingenious machinery has been constructed which has brought the cost of such operations to its lowest terms. ”

“ It has been repeatedly shown above that iron not excited by a stone turns north and south; further that it has verticity, that is, special and peculiar polar distinctions, just as a loadstone, or iron which has been rubbed upon a loadstone. This indeed seemed to us at first wonderful and incredible; the metal of iron from the mine is smelted in the furnace; it runs out of the furnace, and hardens into a great mass; this mass is divided in great worksteads, and is drawn into iron bars, from which smiths again construct many instruments and necessary pieces of iron-work. ”

“ Society in 1870 ran much more safely on iron rails. But the unborn society of the steel age was making rail specifications beforehand. It was a society for which a quarter of a million miles of railway would have to be laid in one generation. That simply could not be done with iron rails. There would not be enough fuel, labor and time by the old wrought iron process to make or replace iron rails on any such scale. Shoeing that society with iron rails would be like shoeing an army with eiderdown slippers. ”

“ Every piece of comparatively small iron-work used in the construction of railway engines, carriages, vans, and trucks, from a door-hinge to a coupling-chain, was forged in that smithy. Passing onward, they came to a workshop where iron castings of all kinds were being made; cylinders, fire-boxes, etcetera,—and a savage-looking place it was, with numerous holes and pits of various shapes and depths in the black earthy floor, which were the moulds ready, or in preparation, for the reception of the molten metal. ”

“ Billy looked at him questioningly.
“That was rather technical, wasn’t it, Billy? You see, I was talking to a technical man. Just between you and me, meteoric iron comes down from the sky, from what we call shooting stars. Sometimes large pieces are found. I suppose that much of it falls into the sea. It is the purest iron that has ever been found.”
“What about magnetic iron?” asked Dr. Crandon. “Where does that come from?”
“At the present time,” answered Mr. Prescott, “most of it comes from Sweden and Norway. It makes the best kind of steel. ”

“ An iron safe is not a thing which is easily moved from its position, but Nick seized upon it, nevertheless; nor was he surprised when he found that it was so perfectly balanced on the wheels that supported it that it moved readily enough in response to his efforts.
And behind it was the door he sought. It was not over three feet high, and thirty inches in width, but there was a latch upon it, mortised into the wood, and there was a hole in the door, through which was passed a small steel chain that was attached to a rung fastened to the iron safe. ”

“ But a powerful and fresh loadstone attracts sound and clean pieces of iron, and those pieces of iron (when they have conceived strength) have a powerful attraction for other iron wires and iron nails, not only one at a time, but even successively one behind another, three, four or five, end to end, sticking and hanging in order like a chain. ”

“ It is merely a place of many ditches, or run-ways, that lead the molten iron from the furnace to the ladle. Very little iron is ever "cast," since the blast-furnaces here make iron only for the sake of swiftly transporting it, while still hot, to the Bessemer and open-hearth, for further metamorphosis into steel. ”

“ It is often the same in river sand, as in Noricum. A nearly pure ore of iron is now often dug up in Ireland, which the smiths, without the labours of furnaces, hammer out in the smithy into iron implements. In France iron is very commonly smelted out of a liver-coloured stone, in which are glittering scales ”

“ A common horse-shoe magnet, such as can be bought for a mere trifle at any toyshop, will be found very useful for extracting particles of iron from other mineral. Whenever the means of transport will admit, it is well to take a small compact case of simple appliances, tests, and reagents. ”

“ Prescott. “Heat expands iron. If we didn’t keep it cool, the screw wouldn’t be the right size when it is done.
“Cold naturally works the other way. Ever hear about the iron bridge where the parts wouldn’t quite come together, so they put ice on to do the job?” he asked, but he kept right on, without waiting for Billy to answer.
Billy saw other machines boring holes and rounding corners. It seemed as if iron could cut iron into any shape that anybody wanted. ”

“ Within the past ten years iron has been brought extensively into use for railroad bridging; and when employed by those who understand its chemical and mechanical nature is unequalled for strength, durability, and elegance of appearance; but when, as is too often the case in America, it is intrusted to men who neither know nor care for any thing but the price they get for it, nothing can be more unsafe. No material requires so complete a knowledge of its properties, to be safely used, as cast-iron. ”

“ Again, iron which has been excited by a loadstone, * if that iron on account of obstacles should not be able to turn round immediately in accordance with its nature, as happens with a versorium, is laid hold of, when a loadstone approaches, on either side or at either end. Because, just as it can implant, so it can suddenly change the polarity and turn about the formal energies to any part whatever. So variously can iron be transformed when its form is adventitious and has not yet been long resident in the metal. ”

“ We know in fact the existence of iron in two states, so dissimilar, that in the one, it is to the electric chain like platinum, and in the other it is like zinc; so that powerful galvanic machines have been constructed of this one metal. ”

“ The multifarious use of iron in our day has given its name to the age. We have got far beyond the primitive applications of that metal—every day it is supplanting some other substance, and there is no saying where the wide-spread and varied service we exact from it will stop. The invention of the steam-engine, and the improvement of manufacturing machines, would be comparatively valueless, unless we had at command a cheap and abundant supply of iron for their construction. ”

“ This iron we term wrought, and its attraction by the loadstone is manifest to all. But we, by more carefully trying everything, have found out that iron merely, by itself alone, not excited by any loadstone, not charged by any alien forces, attracts other iron; though it does not so eagerly snatch and suddenly pluck at it as would a fairly strong loadstone ”

“ But if the loadstone draws the dust to itself quickly and readily, we conjecture that the iron ore is rich; if slowly, poor; if it seems altogether to reject it, there is very little iron in it or none at all. In like manner iron dust can be separated from another metal. Many tricks there are also, when iron is secretly applied to lighter bodies, and, being attracted by the motion of a loadstone which is kept out of sight, causes movements which are amazing to those who do not know the cause. ”

“ Prescott, “just remember three things: fuel, blast, and hammer—power, of course, behind the hammer. It’s the different variations that men have been making on those three things that have brought iron where it is to-day.
“Iron ore has so many things besides iron in it that the problem has always been how to get the impurities out.
“The old blacksmiths used to put it in the fire and hammer it; put it back in the fire and hammer again, until they worked most of the other things out. They made what is called forge iron. ”

“ That is, as soon as a vessel costing millions of dollars leaves the docks, she enters into active competition for a place on the junk pile."
The greatest improvement that can be imagined in the iron situation will be in the discovery and use of alloys or mixtures of iron with other materials. Steel, the strongest of all forms of iron, is an alloy of iron and carbon, and for various purposes these are further mixed with nickel and silicas. Many other alloys have been discovered within the last few years, and each makes possible new uses for iron requiring greater strength. ”

“ While I write, iron is doubtless flowing from blast furnaces in England, Wales, and Scotland; while I write, ingots of white-hot Bessemer steel are being dealt with under the steam-hammer or in the rolling-mills; while I write, horse-shoes are being forged, and, at each moment, in one way or another, pieces of iron of every temperature could be found, from those which are as cold as the iron apparatus used by Sir James Dewar in his experiments in the liquefaction of air, up to the glittering melted steel which is poured from the tilted converter. ”